In recent years there has been considerable progress in integrated optics technology. Optical devices such as modulators, switches and multiplexers have been successfully fabricated on single substrates of both dielectrics and semiconductors. These devices are rugged, compact and relatively easy to construct. They are also compatible with optical fibers, semiconductor lasers and photodiodes. One such optical device is the Mach-Zehnder interferometeric modulator. In that device, an optical signal in an input optical waveguide is divided into two branches of equal lengths. The signals from the two branches are then recombined in a single-mode output waveguide. By electro-optically varying the index of refraction of one or both of those branches, the relative phase of the light at the end of each branch can be varied. The interference of those two recombined signals results in an output intensity which is dependent on the index of refraction of the controlled branch.
Attention is called to an article entitled "Picosecond Optical Sampling" by the inventors and their colleagues in the IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics, Vol. QE-16, pp. 870-874, August 1980 and the references cited therein.
There exists a need for a generator of ultra-short optical pulses of regular shape and duration which can produce jitter-free trains of such pulses.